Following my recent critique here of the book Disconnect by Devra Davis, about the purported dangers of cell phones to health, David Gorski asked me to comment on a recently published “review article” on the same subject. The article is entitled “Risk of Brain Tumors from Wireless Phone Use” by Dubey et al [1] published in the J. Comput Assist Tomography. At the outset, the same question occurred to both of us: what is a “review article” about cell phones and brain tumors doing in a highly technical journal dedicated to CT scans and CT imaging? While we are both still guessing about the answer to this question, we agreed that the article itself is a hodge-podge of irrational analysis.

As you might surmise, Dubey and his Indian co-authors come to the conclusion that “that the current standard of exposure to microwave during mobile phone use is not safe for long-term exposure and needs to be revised.” But within the conclusion there is also the following: “There is no credible evidence from the Environmental Health and Safety Office (I presume in India) about the cause of cancer or brain tumors with the use of cell phones. It is illogical to believe that evidence of unusual brain tumors is only because of hundred’s of millions of people using cell phones worldwide.” What?! These are opposite and contradictory statements. The main body of the article includes a lot more instances of such inconsistency.